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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29134095">escapism</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/subwaywalls/pseuds/subwaywalls'>subwaywalls</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Minecraft (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Content Warnings in Chapter Notes, Dreamons, Duckling Dream, Gen, Therapist Puffy, what if instead of a tiny black box that’s probably hell on his adhd he had... gasp... therapy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 07:01:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,959</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29134095</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/subwaywalls/pseuds/subwaywalls</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The truth is this: they don’t remember which is the dreamon and which is not.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cara | CaptainPuffy &amp; Clay | Dream</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>333</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>people enjoyed this over on <a href="https://subwalls.tumblr.com/post/641246357921890305/">tumblr</a> so I figured I might as well brush it up a bit and put it up on here, too. I have... plans. heed the tags; they will change as the story progresses.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Dream turns the clock over in his hands. His bones are still over-warm from the lava that stripped them earlier today—just hours ago, if he trusts the dial of the clock—and that crawling itch of inactivity is starting to scratch at the inside of his skull again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s maddening. Especially with the elder guardian’s curse dragging him down, sapping his energy until all he can do is lay listlessly on the obsidian floor while his brain </span>
  <em>
    <span>screams</span>
  </em>
  <span> at him to do something. Anything. Go. Move!</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The lavacast bubbles enticingly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>With great effort, he shoves the impulse aside. Instead, he looks down in his hands at the empty book labeled “Why”, its matching quill long since snapped and burned away. Even if he had the materials, he doubts he’d write in it; his mind refuses to commit to the task, his heart refuses to commit to the question, and the pages are all tattered anyway from his constant picking at the edges. Maybe the warden will take pity on him and replace it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dream snorts. Maybe the warden will take pity and let the lava flow </span>
  <em>
    <span>into</span>
  </em>
  <span> the cell, for once, to at least give him something to do besides stare into the glowstone lights until his eyes go dark.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ha. As if Sam would ever be so merciful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(“Knowing you, Sam, you wouldn’t touch me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Knowing you, Dream? I won’t need to.”)</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh,</span>
  </em>
  <span> says a voice, and for a moment Dream thinks it’s his own, but—no, the inflection is different. Dream pushes himself upright and his tortured eyes skitter across the open end of the cell for a second before finally locking onto something new. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Someone new.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A figure floats gently above the obsidian floor, gloriously backlit by the lavacast. Dream sucks in a shuddering breath and forcibly gets to his feet, ignoring his protesting limbs. “Took you long enough,” he rasps, throat dry.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>DreamXD looks at him with a sadness so deep it borders on pity. He wears a mask with the eyes crossed out and the mouth in a gaping grin instead of a subtle smile, but Dream knows that behind that pale porcelain is a face that mirrors his own, with mannerisms to match. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, maybe. Dream’s been through a lot more than XD has; they’re quite different now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Case in point: XD reaches out to Dream’s exposed hand, touching angry scar tissue so thick it feels like it goes down to the bone with an unblemished hand. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Look what you’ve gotten yourself into,</span>
  </em>
  <span> XD says. His cloak flutters, more blue than green but still somewhat both. The colors melt into each other with every blink, alive in the same way Eyes of Ender are. </span>
  <em>
    <span>What a sticky situation… I told you this wouldn’t work.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Dream bares his teeth at the self-that-is-not, the other, the protector, the piece he lost when the exorcism split him in two.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(The truth is this: they don’t remember which is the dreamon and which is not. Dream’s body may be human, but he remembers being ageless as much as he remembers being a child. XD remembers that too, but neither of them have the complete picture. The jigsaw puzzles of their histories have been jumbled up and unevenly divided, with Dream bearing most of the burden.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dream knows he’s got the attitude of a dreamon but the mortality of a human. XD is the other way around, with a human’s morality but the undying body of a dreamon. What does that make each of them now? Not one or the other, certainly. Gods, of a sort? Less than gods?)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(… More?) </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You still owe me,” says the human-body dreamon-mind, digging nails into the tough, calloused skin of his palms hard enough to draw blood. “I still get one more thing from you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dreamon-body human-soul nods, because this is true. Back in the early days of their diverging paths, XD and Dream had agreed to a deal. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rule of threes, they’d said. Three favors. Three wishes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>XD wanted the world to live long. Dream taught him to pull memory from the players, to curse away the knowledge of the End and the Dragon that lived there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dream wanted to fend off death. XD took a stack of golden apples and ran his fingers gently over their glistening skin, enchanting them as strongly as they could bear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>XD wanted the players to be united. Dream alienated them all, so that they would either unite beneath him or against him. (He did not acknowledge XD’s drooping shoulders, when he told him of this plan.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dream wanted immortality. XD looked long and hard at his scarred arms and cracked mask, and gently let the knowledge of resurrection float into the world until it eventually settled into Dream’s hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>XD wanted peace. Dream felt the totem burn in his pocket and the apples gleam in his hands, felt nearly divine enough to be a god… and yielded to Tommy’s revenge anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And now. Dream wants freedom.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Wilbur wanted freedom, once.)</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I can’t break you out,</span>
  </em>
  <span> XD says. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I can’t make something out of nothing, or nothing out of something.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>So. Dream holds up his clock, the one thing in the cell still bound to a world outside of obsidian and lava. He loves and hates it in the same breath, but he’ll give it all up for this. “Four gold and one redstone,” he says, that grin under his broken mask unveils a hidden panic, a strain that was never there before. “Is that enough for flint and steel?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the problem is—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>XD had hoped that this cage would hold this other self of his, this fractured mess of a person forced to marinate in the consequences of his actions with a guilt he struggles to understand and accept.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the problem is—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cage is the shape of a dormant portal, and redstone is already halfway an ignition, and gold to steel is so easy a change, and even the oldest guardians can only hold their curse for a few minutes if their target is not in this dimension. Flint and steel will break no blocks, ring no alarms, and wake no guards. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the problem is—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>XD had hoped that this cage would save him, but instead he sees it killing his other half like slow poison, like how Tommy once suffered. His human heart is too gentle to condemn someone already bending to the pressure of this punishment, no matter how hungry his dreamon stomach gets. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the problem is—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cage is cruel. It is a box meant to isolate, to contain, and it drives humans insane because they need bonds to stay grounded. For someone who mistakenly cut them out of himself, who underestimated how human he is—it is almost worse. It is almost definitely worse. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the problem is—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe this is the best that humans can do. Maybe they have no solution but to lock up something they do not understand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the problem is—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe that’s not true.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So, the problem is—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Four gold and one redstone is plenty enough for flint and steel.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Be careful,</span>
  </em>
  <span> XD says, melting gold and shifting redstone until a whole new item glistens between Dream’s hands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Click. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fwoosh.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Purple light dances over them, ever-twisting. On the other side is another slew of challenges. Harder in some ways, easier in others.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will,” Dream says, his breath hitched like he doesn’t quite dare to hope. “I won’t get caught again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>XD frowns, as Dream tucks his newest tool into his pocket and lets the portal suffuse into him.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That’s not what I meant,</span>
  </em>
  <span> XD begins, but by the time he reorganizes his thoughts, Dream’s already vanished into the nether. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>XD remains in the cell for a beat longer, listening to the portal’s rhythmic humming and the way it clashes against the rest of the prison’s presence. It triumphantly drowns out the bubbling lava, the moaning guardians, the softest whisper of warm air on paper.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The redstone is still asleep. It won’t hiss and spark to life for a while, not with the warden still recovering from the damned Crimson and the guards focusing on the perimeter instead of the interior and no visitors coming to look Dream in the eye. Even the food process is automated now, with potatoes dispensed into the cell without direct contact.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dream has plenty of time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Six layers of obsidian is a lot to mine by hand, but not impossible. Especially not once the guardians’ curse fades.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>XD sighs. He is alone in the innermost cell of Pandora’s vault, not by design but by choice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then he is gone, and the cell’s only occupant is the guilty portal glowing in its depths.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Curling red vines lay thick and pulsing over the land. Several tendrils sprawl across the worn oak wood of the Prime path, though a few have been cut apart enough times that they’ve learned to grow over it instead. Walking under a grotesque archway of fungal matter isn’t much better than parkouring around them, but fewer people bother cutting down something over their heads.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Puffy hates it with a passion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re lucky it’s too late to be dealing with your shit tonight, Egg,” she says, steering well clear of all things red in the vicinity. It makes her commute home a little tricky, since the stuff is </span>
  <em>
    <span>everywhere,</span>
  </em>
  <span> but she’d sooner have its little cult slit her throat and feed her to it than let it intimidate her out of her hard-earned mushroom house.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So long as the said house still stands, that is. She’s got a feeling that might not be for long, if the Egg keeps going the way it has. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At least she has a backup plan. Foolish says she’s welcome to his summer home once it’s done. Actually, she spent most of the day over at his build site today, taking the time to admire his ambitious and masterful plans. He’s a very bright kid, plenty willing to strike up a conversation as she helps move sandstone and plot out dimensions and kill any mobs that happen to spawn in the area.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s one of the better ways to spend a day, honestly. Being guard and protector is an old hat of hers by now, but never a boring one. She likes spending time with Foolish whenever possible, whether that means providing resources or discussing his builds, because it that means her assumed role as Guiding Parental Figure isn’t just for show.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unlike…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Puffy rubs a hand over her face and sighs. Dusk is the hour of regret, it seems, with the fading sunlight slanting ominously across the land and the sound of the wind on leaves like the distant laughter of children. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She pushes away the sepia-toned memories before they can fully rise. That was then, and this is now: peace, of a sort. It feels more like stillness than anything, like breaths measured out between panic attacks, like the air paralyzed as a storm draws ever closer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But that doesn’t mean it can’t be salvaged. The vines grow stronger but so do those who oppose it, and without something to kickstart the conflict, it might remain a relatively cold war.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Probably not.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Puffy narrows her eyes at what looks like yet another new branching tendril pointed suspiciously towards the back of her base, like it’s trying to sneak up on her. “Don’t make me pull out the netherite hoe,” she threatens, making sure to stomp past it as loudly as possible. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It might’ve flinched a couple pixels away from her netherite boots, but Puffy doesn’t bother leaning in to check. Direct touch is a one-way ticket to possession, after all. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anything else is pretty safe, though. She feels confident enough to dig her heels into the ground a single block away and relish in the fact that soft dirt and green grass is still what meets her foot, not any of that weird crunchy-damp red stuff. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>If she weren’t so alert and paranoid about the Crimson, she might’ve missed the little smudge of red around the corner of her house—but she’s a captain and a knight for a reason, and even though colors tend to evade her, she’s learned to pick out the snakes from the grass, so to speak.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Cautiously, Puffy squints at the blotch of darker, less saturated color left on her house. It doesn’t seem to be anything like the vines, so she deems it safe enough to brush her knuckles against it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It flakes away easily enough. It’s definitely not part of the blood vines, that’s for sure.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Actually… it might just be blood, period. She’s seen enough of </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> shed around here to identify it, even as a faint discoloring on her build.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Puffy frowns. Someone hurt and bleeding must’ve passed by, and not too long ago either, or the earlier rain would’ve washed it all away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whoever it is might be in trouble. It’s nighttime, and the hostile mobs are roaming.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not that the spiders and the undead are difficult to take care of or anything. No, the true threat lies in the tangled web of tendrils that lay scattered across the area like waiting traps, feelers prepared to snare whatever poor soul next treads on it. And if the person is already weakened, then they might succumb to its thrall faster.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unless Puffy finds them first. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She gives her mushroom house a single, longing look. It’s warm and comfortable inside, not to mention safe, since the windows are shut and walls untouched and a single strand of wool remains caught between the door and its frame. Once she goes inside she might be too comfortable to leave until morning, is the issue. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because sleep can always come later. But there’s no coming back from the Egg. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knows. She’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>tried,</span>
  </em>
  <span> both alone and with whoever was closest. It just doesn’t work.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She has to stop the control from taking root in the first place, and to do that, she has to track that person down. Using only a tiny smear of blood. Yup. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her chances aren’t exactly great, suffice it to say, but not nonexistent. The fact that there’s only one splotch of blood—and she checks her house to make sure that yes, it is the only one—means the person must be very good at moving while bleeding, or isn’t that badly injured at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, if they’re not badly injured, then they’re probably chunks away by now and don’t need worrying about. But if they’re really hurt, hurt enough to sway against someone else’s build for balance before shuffling off again, then they must still be close by.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shelter would’ve been their first priority. Puffy squints at her surroundings, figuring that if they passed up taking refuge in her base, they’re probably avoiding bases altogether. That’s fine, there’s plenty of hidey holes around to duck into as needed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She lights a torch to help scour the area. Making noise is a bad idea that would only draw mobs her way, but every now and then she’ll poke her head into a shallow tunnel and whisper, “Hello? Do you need help?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No response. Nothing. Aside for the few monsters she dispatches along the way, it seems like there’s nobody around.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well. Maybe they’ve gone and appropriated a base after all, in which case they’re probably fine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Some of that initial tension uncoils from her shoulders as she treks back towards her house, stifling a yawn. Better that she didn’t find anyone, she figures. Means nobody’s in desperate need of help or anything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She does notice a fresh, budding seed of red poking out pretty close to her duck pond though, and that’s not allowed. Mining the crimson nylium takes but a beat, and she tosses the remaining items aside to despawn on their own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That does remind her, though, that she hasn’t ducked into her first base in a while. Might as well check in, clear it out, make sure that there’s no seed in there that might come crawling through the walls and underbelly of the build in a day or two’s time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Puffy wades into the pond, watching the ripples spread out in the moonlight for a moment to make sure no drowned are about to float up and attack her, and then ducks under the surface.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The fact that the entrance is underwater means it’s a bit of a hassle to get in and out of this base. Enchanted netherite does well enough to repel most of the moisture, especially with Depth Strider, but coming in dripping wet isn’t exactly ideal. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She makes a mental note to add a backdoor or something as she splashes up, reaching to the edge and pulling herself up and into the—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A snarl rips through the air, and Puffy freezes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s someone here—a figure curled up in the corner, robed in tattered green with hooded eyes. There’s blood on the floor and a strange stiffness in the silhouette’s posture, but even like this, in the half-shaded night, Puffy knows him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course Puffy would know him in shadow. That’s how they first met, after all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A message pops up in her peripheral vision, in the slanted grey words of a whisper. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Come to the castle,</span>
  </em>
  <span> says Punz, says the mercenary, says the ex-knight who left the righteous round table with his head high and his eyes drawn to the gleam of treasure, says a guard of Pandora’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking</span>
  </em>
  <span> Vault. </span>
  <em>
    <span>There’s something important I need to tell you.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Puffy thinks she might already know what it is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With a heart wrenched open but gaze holding steady on her lost duckling come home, Puffy says, carefully, “What are you doing here, Dream?”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>"yeah ill finish east of eden before i start a new fic" so that was a fuckin lie,</p><p>anyway hope you enjoyed. I wanna work with XD bc he's cool and also duckling dynamic because duckling brainrot, sue me. so I just mashed two concepts together and there is now This Thing which actually has like. a plot. </p><p>I just hope I write fast enough that canon doesn't completely break it before I finish sjhdgfksf</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>cw // suicide ideation.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Cold. </p><p>Cold. </p><p>Why is he cold? Why is he so light? Where’s the weight, the boiling in his lungs, the suffocating heat? </p><p>Dream drags in a ragged breath and it feels like swallowing glass, like choking on hailstones, like that one time Sapnap tripped him into a frozen river and he cracked his teeth on the ice but laughed anyway, blood warm in his mouth, fluffy snowflakes melting in his lashes as he grinned a bloody grin at his unrepentant hunter. </p><p>He doesn’t taste blood, though. He can see it, sluggishly seeping through the cracked and abused skin of his hands, but it doesn’t reach his mouth. </p><p>Dream closes his eyes. Memories should stay in the past, where they belong. Why blemish all that untouched snow with obsidian and lava?</p><p>No, not obsidian. No more obsidian. He’d already clawed through obsidian bare-handed and threw himself onto netherrack so hard he nearly died all over again. His legs still throb from the effort of pushing him up and limping all the way to the closest portal with tears steaming as they rolled down his cheek.</p><p>He’s out now, and he desperately needs to rest, but he can’t find a bed and so long as he can’t find a bed, he can’t die. Everything hurts, yes, and he wants it to go away, but he can’t. </p><p>He needs to remember that. Until he gets to a bed, he can’t let himself die, not even to clear the visions dancing in his line of sight.</p><p>A part of him feels bad for snarling at the figure slowly closing in on him, which definitely isn’t the drowned zombie he’d thought it was. Undead mobs don’t hover blurry at the edge of his periphery with a maroon coat and incandescent wool, and they especially don’t keep their distance from weak prey like the very sight of him is poisonous. <em> Too sharp. </em></p><p>Dream shakes his head. Hallucinations are all too common now, especially when he’s this tired and aching, and he knows the person standing in front of him must be one of the many. It’s a fitting one, since he’s in her base, but irritating nonetheless.</p><p>He’d thought the terrifying view of the evening sky yawning wide and endless overhead would’ve shaken all that nonsense out of his bones already.</p><p>It hadn’t, clearly, so now he has to deal with this.</p><p>“Dream?”</p><p>Besides respawning, there’s only one way to make her—<em> it, </em> not her, it’s not real—go away, and that’s to go through the motions of a proper conversation. “Hello,” he says to the floor, voice still rough with disuse. One tiny conversation with an inhuman entity isn’t going to change that. “I thought you moved out of this base.”</p><p>There’s a pause, during which Dream examines his bloody fingers and wonders how long his body will demand he rest before he can stand up and find another bed already. He needs to keep moving; there’s been plenty of time now for someone to notice his disappearance, surely. Over a day? More?</p><p>All that lava has melted his sense of time. That’s a dangerous skill to lose, but not impossible to work around.</p><p>He wishes he had a clock.</p><p>“Dream,” says her voice, “I don’t—you’re not supposed to be here.”</p><p>“No,” he agrees. He’s supposed to be home, not holed up in someone else’s base in the middle of enemy territory. </p><p>“How’d you get out?”</p><p>At this, Dream bares his teeth, fists clenching as though the faded memories of a charmed kid following around a regal captain were a soft animal he could wring the life out of by the neck. This is fake. This is a <em> test. </em></p><p>He knows that the vision will say something cruel and cutting and threatening if he answers faithfully. His mind was always better at training him for victory than his heart, mocking up scenarios for him to navigate until he learns better than the mistakes he made before.</p><p>The lessons are always the same: Don’t trust, don’t bond, don’t get attached. Don’t yield.</p><p>
  <em> Too sharp, little nightmare. </em>
</p><p>Well. Better too sharp than to roll over and let the butcher carve into his belly without a fight.</p><p>“I’m not done yet,” Dream says, “that’s how.”</p><p>“You <em> are </em> done,” it says, whip-quick and razor sharp and exactly as he knew it would respond. “You were done in weeks ago, when Tommy and Tubbo beat you and brought you in and Sam locked you up.”</p><p>Dream stares into the light of a torch until his eyes water, and even then does not look away. The familiarness of his stinging eyes is reassuring, somewhat—reminiscent of a little speck of glowstone reflected in a glossy black block. </p><p>“Are you going to take me back?” he asks, purposefully withering his tone with defeat. He has to play pitiful in this situation, when he is tired and his spawn still locked to Pandora’s Vault. Falsifying fragility is not the same as being weak, no matter how easily it comes to him, no matter how eager his voice is to tremble when he lets up on the reins. Or so he tells himself. “Tommy already won. I was only going to leave. Nobody would have noticed, anyway. Nobody visits.”</p><p>Exasperated, the visage sighs. Dream pretends to be cowed as it says, “That’s not what it’s about, Dream. You know that.”</p><p>He does know. </p><p>The thing is, he was bad. As in he simply hadn’t been good enough. </p><p>He needs to be stronger, strong enough to bring his server to heel, strong enough to return everything back to the way it was when it was just him and his blood-brothers, and then—his plans dissolve there, melting into insubstantial honey-sunsets and spun-sugar, but it’s enough to know that he’s hungry and cold and he <em> wants. </em></p><p>But all he says is, “I’m not going back. I won’t be in your hair, I’ll be ages away. Like Tommy was.” Or, more precisely, like Techno was: all sheathed claws and pleasantries, up until the impatient grudges of his enemies sparked his wick again.</p><p>The difference is that Techno burns meticulously. Each wither is a ritual, each rocket a warsong, each blade a chorus of calculations in perfect balance. </p><p>Dream, on the other hand, is the randomness of dynamite raining down from an obsidian grid, is the laughter echoing in a deep ravine, is the joy of feet pounding on dirt and the mud and sweat that flies through the air. He cannot be chased out or contained any more than a thunderstorm can be stopped from striking lightning where it chooses.</p><p>Except that he was, of course.</p><p>Except that he is a system of perpetual motion chained to a grinding halt for two silent months, and when he tries too fast now the ground pitches under him like neither remember how to handle the other.</p><p>(Even lightning can be channeled and redirected and torn from the sky to bleed out into the earth.)</p><p>It occurs to him, belatedly, that the sounds buzzing in the air right now are probably words, and he should probably be listening to them. For the sake of the mental exercise, if nothing else. Practice. Talk to the vision, walk it through to its inevitable betrayal, come out stronger for it.</p><p>But focus is incredibly fleeting, slipping out from his fingers to find greener pastures elsewhere, and Dream is left ungrounded and drifting and unlistening. </p><p>The helplessness of it leaves a sour taste in his throat, like ice water in his veins, shivering down his spine. He isn’t used to being this disconnected to his surroundings when he knows he isn’t safe.</p><p>He needs a hard reset. Right now.</p><p>“Need a bed,” he whispers, the words like liquid slurry in his mouth. He shuts his eyes, takes a steadying breath, shoves down everything nonessential. All that uncertainty and exhaustion and pain can be managed later, or never. For now, just concentrate. One thing at a time, and that one thing right now is… “A bed.”</p><p>“A bed?” the hallucination echoes, and Dream’s equally happy to be stringing it along and upset to not be faking as much of his unsteadiness as he’d like.</p><p>“Please,” he says, <em> gentler, </em> and wants to spit the syllable onto the floor like a bloody tooth.</p><p>There’s a pause, and then a rustle. “Well, alright,” and that’s odd, they’re not usually so quick to cave. “Ranboo’s been duplicating them, so it’s not like we have a shortage… Dream?”</p><p>Dream lifts his head, watches a white-sheeted bed spring up to full size on the yellow concrete.</p><p>Hope is a soft bundle of chickling down held captive in his ribs. Slowly, he reaches out, bracing himself for the bed to turn to mist between his fingers and for the vision to laugh at him and for the fragile, hollow-boned thing in his chest to die a horrible sobbing death. Like it should. Like it deserves.</p><p>Instead, his knuckles hit soft fabric. </p><p>His eyes widen. He grabs at it, wrinkling the blanket and gasping as the magic of the world twitches in response to the contact, binding him to wool and wood.</p><p>And that baby-bird <em> elpis, </em> fluttering in an earthen <em> pithos </em> sealed with the pitch of his blood—so small and young and innocent—it does not die, exactly. </p><p>(Don’t forget: there are worse fates than death.)</p><p>It curdles into <em> wrath. </em></p><p>Blood roars up a storm in his ears and Dream surges to his feet with eyes only for the Thorns gleaming on netherite armor, the pondwater lapping at concrete, bidding he enter it so it can enter him, too. Water is slower than lava but no less effective, so he lunges through the illusion to reach it but collides instead, and in sheer single-minded desperation he turns with something untamed howling through his veins and doesn’t even register the enchanted blade coming for his neck because it’s fake it’s not real he does not dream of black tricorn hats or glowing halos or worn bandannas or goggles he does not sleep he does not <em> dream </em> he is empty he is starving he is bleeding he is he is he—</p><p>
  <b>&gt; Dream was slain by CaptainPuffy using W’manberg.</b>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The moment Dream collapses into ash on her sword, Puffy knows she’s on borrowed time.</p><p>Dream’s death at her hands immediately gets logged in chat, so she’s got seconds before everyone else starts spamming her for coordinates or explanations. She doesn’t intend to respond to them, though. Not yet.</p><p>First, she turns to the bed.</p><p>There’s a reason she set it down for Dream to use, even though there was a slim chance that his spawn could still be keyed to Pandora’s Vault. Without the spawn trap, nothing is left to bind him to those walls of blackstone and obsidian. They might as well hand him the key to the place on a diamond platter at that point.</p><p>But Dream’s already gotten this far, and there’s no telling what bed he hit on the way here. Setting one in front of him for him to click with before she swings means Puffy knows exactly where he’ll reappear.</p><p>So—as space stutters and Dream respawns with a gasp, excess light drifting off his shoulders, Puffy tucks the tip of W’manburg under his chin. The netherite blade just barely nicks the skin of his exposed neck, threatening to draw blood.</p><p>She meets his gaze evenly. His eyes are clearer than they were a moment ago, but still skitter off to the side like he can’t quite focus on her face.</p><p>“Oh,” Dream says, dry and noncommittal and the tail end of surprised before that emotion can be properly wiped off his face. He lifts a heavily scarred arm as though to brush the sword away from his throat, only to stop when the pointed tip digs in a little deeper. “Oh—alright, fine.” And raises his hands in mock surrender, rolling his eyes even as his wrists tremble in the air.</p><p>Puffy narrows her eyes at him. “I could have taken your life just then,” she says, “and I still can.”</p><p>“If I was going to be put down, it would’ve happened already,” Dream retorts icily, leagues more coherent than he’d been right before he died. </p><p>“I could send you back to the Warden.”</p><p>“But you haven’t.” He rolls his shoulders back, lifts his head, and suddenly looks nothing like the miserable person cramming himself against the chest-lined wall with his hands tucked against his hyperventilating chest. There’s no shaking, no inward shrinking—just the villain that she’s learned to expect in a body that was once her duckling’s. “Besides, I’ve just proven that I’ll always find a way out. Pandora’s Vault won’t hold me.”</p><p>Maybe not. It’ll do <em> something </em> to him, though. </p><p>Puffy’s never been inside to visit and doesn’t know if she’d even be allowed, but it’s easy to see that Dream is… different. If he was sharp before he’s all but broken now. Not better. Not <em> fixed, </em> certainly.</p><p>(He’s worse, a part of her whispers. She wishes it weren’t true.)</p><p>“Instead of keeping me here,” Dream says, mild as milk, dangerous as a cave spider’s nest, “it would be better to chase me out. Make me leave. That way, none of you would have to deal with me at all, and this—this place you’ve made of the server can keep going the way it is. I’m sure <em> nothing’s </em> gone wrong while I’ve been locked up, and I don’t want anything to do with it.”</p><p>In another time, she might have trusted that. Or she might have been tired enough to accept it. </p><p>But Puffy has not watched children pick up the broken remnants of their lives just to take Dream’s words at face value, has not shaken off the Egg’s siren song just to sit by and let him lie and lie and lie. “And let you scheme unsupervised until you’re ready to retaliate?” she says. “I don’t think so.”</p><p>“Then we’re at a stalemate.”</p><p>“No, we’re not, because I can still kill you, and nobody really needs the secret to resurrection <em> that </em> desperately,” Puffy says. Not when their only foe right now is mind control and their only ghosts don’t want to be revived. “You really just haven’t learned a thing, huh? <em> ” </em> </p><p>“I learned plenty,” Dream snaps, bristling, and the louder he tries to get the more his voice falters. “I learned I was <em> right, </em> that trust was my downfall, that I don’t need anyone but myself.” </p><p>Puffy says, “The point is that you <em> weren’t </em> right, Dream. We backed up Tommy because—”</p><p>“The point is that it isn’t over,” Dream interrupts, raspy. All of his protests have been directed to an invisible speck hovering somewhere over Puffy’s left shoulder, and his hands lower from their mock-surrender only to pick at the freshly repaired edges of his clothes. “It’s not. I won’t let it be. I may have lost once, but I haven’t lost it all, I can still get them back, I will, I won’t let them go, I won’t, I…” </p><p>Something in his gaze shifts as he speaks, moving off to the distance without moving much at all. Puffy steps closer and he doesn’t react. He doesn’t see her at all, as his voice cracks and dissolves until he’s just mouthing things to himself, whispery and insubstantial and not quite all there.</p><p>He’s hasn’t been bristling, Puffy realizes. He’s shaking.</p><p>Whatever clarity his respawn granted him—it’s gone now, or fading fast.</p><p>“Dream?”</p><p>“I’m going to get out of here,” Dream insists. Somehow, Puffy gets the idea that he’s not talking about the duck statue.</p><p>And—Puffy’s not an idiot when it comes to <em> people, </em> see. She knows how people tick, knocks how to use charisma like a lockpick to get what she wants.</p><p>Dream is a person, too. A monster of one, nowadays, but a person nonetheless. </p><p>It is not pity or misplaced love or rotted nostalgia that prompts her to dismiss the hunting dogs braying for his blood. It is the steel-core understanding that to disarm the ticking time bomb that is Dream, to save Tommy and Tubbo from another confrontation, she cannot leave him to sharpen his teeth on the prison walls.</p><p>The messages pour in. She sends only one back.</p><p>
  <strong>&lt;CaptainPuffy&gt; Sorry, I was trying to get him off spawn but he must've linked up to someone’s bed.</strong>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“oh no star what are you going to do now that escapism is decanonized” im gonna yank this world off its canon-guided rails is what im gonna do. watch me fuckin go. woot woot we’re on a nonstop trip to Complexity Town folks</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Distantly, Dream knows he’s spiralling. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s not a rare occurrence. Nothing makes the clock move faster than when his thoughts kick themselves into a spinning frenzy, and normally he’d relish in it, but he can’t right now. He shouldn’t. He needs to be present and processing, because this isn’t a drill or a test or a practice run. This is real.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She is real.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That fact is frustratingly difficult to keep ahold of, especially when a part of him still doesn’t believe it—that she’s real, that any part of this is real—but it helps that he’s staring at the sword that killed him, its point slid just beneath his chin. Its numerous enchantments have already sizzled away most of his blood, but that only makes its engraved name all the easier to see. The letters carved into the polished grey metal are clean and sharp, with no hint of weathering or abuse.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>W’manburg.</span>
  </em>
  <span> A cleverly named, well-loved weapon, this one. Not like the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Nightmares.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Too sharp,</span>
  </em>
  <span> breathes a whispery growl in his ear, the sound of the spiral collapsing in on itself, and Dream shakes his head to clear it away. The cobwebs stick, as they always do, but he manages to get his thoughts in some semblance of order.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It should be simple. The truest fact, the one that overrides everything else, is that hallucinations can’t touch him. By definition, they simply can’t be real enough to touch. They don’t have collision. They certainly can’t kill him, the way this sword’s wielder just did.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which means that the image of Captain Puffy standing in front of him right now is, in fact, real. As is the yellow concrete below him, and the swordpoint holding up his chin. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But he should probably focus on the person first. She’s strong as ever, proud and pitying, and when Dream searches her eyes for some kind of cue on how he’s supposed to play this, some hint to lead him to a weakness he can exploit, he can’t help but think about quiet loyalty and muddy feathers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nonsense things, really. His inventory is empty. He has nothing to offer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And yet the sword drops. The blade remains unsheathed, the hand that holds it still tense, but it’s not an immediate threat anymore.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The quiet stretches on for a moment, and then Puffy says, “You want to live far away.” The sounds roll carefully over her tongue, like she’s testing them as they pass her lips. “Far away, where no one can be hurt. No one would have to deal with you ever again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream straightens. “Yes,” he lies. And then, because he’s too well-practiced to leave it at that, “That’s what everyone wants, right? It’s the best option. Send me somewhere out of sight and out of mind, too far to reach anyone, too far to do anything. It’s exactly like the prison, but takes up less space and manpower. Nobody would have to worry about me getting out and immediately finding them or whatever. It’s the best possible deal for—”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dream,” Puffy interrupts, and Dream rocks his weight back. It is not a flinch nor a recoil, exactly, but he can’t help the way his hackles rise against the saccharine sweetness of her tone, the sound of someone so out of patience she’s in patience </span>
  <em>
    <span>debt.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Too late, Dream remembers exactly who helped him hone this skill of polishing an offer until it’s too shiny to pass up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He shuts his mouth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy narrows her eyes, but she sounds a little more neutral as she continues, “What I’m </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> doing is letting the others decide what to do with you anymore. Most of them are either blinded by revenge or are just outright children who shouldn’t have to figure this out. Don’t get the wrong idea,” she adds before Dream can even begin to imagine where she’s going with this, “I’m not about to let you make the decision either, Dream.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shame,” Dream says, and shows all his teeth when he smiles.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She ignores that. “You’re technically my responsibility,” she says, and that stills Dream. “I wanted nothing to do with you, when I heard what you did, because I didn’t want to be associated with someone who could be so awful. I couldn’t let myself fail that badly. But that was selfish and cowardly of me. I shouldn’t have left you, I should’ve stopped you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Says the sheep to the all-but-rabid wolf in her pen. Dream says, stiffly, “Stopped me? Nobody could’ve stopped me, least of all you, Captain.” The honorific is as foreign as it is venomous, a purposeful distancing. It rings hollow, like it should. There is nothing in him for it to resonate with.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But neither does it shake Puffy, to Dream’s disappointment. She merely tilts her head, hat shifting to expose the shiny arc of a horn curving out the side of her head, a weapon in all the ways that Dream’s quicksilver tongue is not.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She does not gore him open on it, though he feels the option weigh heavily in the air between them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m stopping you now,” she says. And just as Dream rears up, prepared to spit threats and goads and poisons, she continues, “I’m taking you away.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His thoughts screech to a halt. “What,” he says, flat. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s the best option,” she quotes back at him, and he instinctively dislikes the way she’s using his words against him, even though this is technically what he’d asked for. “You get to never hurt anyone else, and I get to keep an eye on this gosling I raised like a duckling to make sure he stays in line.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream stares at her. She wants his plan, but with a chaperone, basically. “That’s dumb,” he informs. “A whole prison system couldn’t keep a lock on me, and you think </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> can?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course I can,” she says, far more confidently than any one person has any right to be. “Sam’s got spawn on lockdown all cycle. Patrols every day and every night, with no lack of volunteers, and no lack of netherite to go around. You’d lose that last life of yours the moment you tried to go back with respawn, and you </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span> I track like nobody’s business.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The urge to argue presses at Dream, welling up from that empty space in his chest. But why should he tell her all the flaws in her security? Why should he point out the escape routes he’d still have open? Why refine, and refine, and refine, when he’s only going to see himself in the obsidian’s glossy finish, with every escape he can think of already closed off by his own hand?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is what he wants. Why argue?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream presses his tongue against the roof of his mouth, fixates on that pressure instead of the one between his lungs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Play along, he thinks. Why not. Why not.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Too sharp, little nightmare. Too rough with your prey.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Far away,” he says, layering in suspicion and wariness that he doesn’t really feel—not to her. But it’s hard to ignore the crawling growling hissing whispering growing </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing</span>
  </em>
  <span> just outside, now that there’s not layers upon layers of obsidian between them. It’s too easy to feel its influence, too easy to hear it gloat. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream is not dreamon enough to skip out on that terrified human hindbrain writhing in the back of his head, desperate to get as far away as possible. If he could devour his own fear, feed off the negativity he himself bleeds and turn it into something that would pad the abyss of his hunger, he would.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If it could do that to him, it would. It could.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>(It has. And it will.)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Super far,” Puffy agrees. And, in another mocking echo, “Where you can’t hurt anybody. Like how everyone wants.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He raises a brow. Where he can’t hurt anyone… except her, because she’s playing warden. Well, anyone within his reach is free game, as far as he’s concerned. No one is excused, no one is immune. Not even the one who taught him almost everything he knows. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream would have preferred a weaker link to exploit, but this will serve him just fine.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You promise?” he says.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy studies his expression, and Dream doesn’t know what she sees, but it makes her expression harden. “I swear it.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Deal,” Dream says. He doesn’t offer a hand to shake. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She doesn’t ask for one.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Can’t we go right now?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” Puffy says, checking through her chests. She doesn’t want Dream to be armored up, but neither does she want him looking like a fair breeze might blow him over. Just some food, maybe. Carrots would probably work, or baked potatoes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s stopping us?” he asks impatiently.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy decides to go for the potatoes. They’re a bit more filling. “You are.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Me?” Dream says, offense flaring up bright and clear in the way his voice tightens around the word. He moves, and Puffy glances over to watch him pull his arms in closer, as though to make himself a smaller target.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His tells haven’t really changed, she observes. A lot of them have intensified or twisted beyond obvious comprehension, but the root of them remains. Always the more defensive side in a fight, so used to the playstyle of shields and axes, but also quicker to argue fiercely back than let an insult linger.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy’s heart sinks. She could live without the reminder that Dream is still the same person she had a hand in raising, but maybe it’s better that she has to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His behavior had to come from somewhere, after all. It’s well past time she stopped looking away from the idea that a part of it may have come from her, too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For now, she gathers herself with a sigh and a roll of the eyes. In the same half-patient half-teasing way she’d explain mob mechanics to a toddler too scared of caves to realize the joy of exploration, she says, “There’s a literal manhunt for you going on right now. Walking in the open isn’t going to get us anywhere.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nobody’s gonna be looking this way, they all saw that I died,” he says sulkily. He’d never describe himself like that, and never has, but Puffy recognizes the downturn of his mouth through the cracks of his mask as the beginnings of a pout. “They’ll be looking at spawn, or Pandora’s Vault.” And then, with incredible grumpiness, “Nobody lives here, anyway.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy squints at him. “And how do you know that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>overrun</span>
  </em>
  <span> by the oth—by all that red shit, how could I not know?” Dream shoots the walls of the base an especially unhappy glare.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream doesn’t like the Egg, then. That’s… something. A common point of interest to start with, maybe. He’d mentioned before how he was sure the server was getting on just fine without him, with heavy sarcasm, but the matter-of-fact way he speaks of it makes Puffy think that either Dream’s been getting information fed to him during his prison stay, or there’s some history she’s unaware of.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s probably both.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Give it a few, everyone’s spreading out in the wrong direction,” she says, checking the list of online players and finding Bad and Ant thankfully absent. “We’re not waiting long enough for the Egg’s cult to catch us, just enough to make things a little easier.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream mumbles </span>
  <em>
    <span>egg</span>
  </em>
  <span> to himself with something like puzzled exasperation, but Puffy’s too busy tapping out a message to clarify the popularized name for the red growth spreading through the server.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <b>You whisper to awesamdude: is everyone at spawn or prison? I need to check on Foolish, but I’ll be back to help.</b>
  <b></b>
    <br/>
  
  <b>awesamdude whispers to you: Yes. Since he respawned, those are our best options. </b>
  <b>
    <br/>
  </b>
  <b>awesamdude whispers to you: Stay vigilant.</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No need to remind her of that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy claps her hands together, and tries not to blink in surprise when Dream jerks at the sound, like it spooked him. “Okay, let’s go. Stay with me or I’ll kill you. Take these,” and she drops a half stack of baked potatoes on him, “we’re going to travel by nether. Don’t forget that my armor has knockback resistance, so you can’t push me off any bridges. No shenanigans from you. Don’t punch the piglins, don’t deflect the ghasts’ fireballs. Stick. With. Me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream is still looking at the potatoes with something like frustration, but he does put them away. “Just get yourself a child leash and be done with it,” he grumbles, but she takes that as agreement. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Great idea,” she says, declining to mention that she’s fairly certain he’d wind up dragging her off cliffs in an attempt to kill them both and have them respawn on equal ground if she actually tied them together. He doesn’t weigh enough to displace a healthy player in full armor, but he’d probably </span>
  <em>
    <span>try.</span>
  </em>
  <span> “Maybe next time I’ll even give you a bell to hold on to.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The disdainful noise Dream makes in response just barely nudges a smile to her face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She hops into the water, waits for her re-established ward to follow, and quickly plugs up the entrance with some extra concrete once he’s clear. He’s still bound to the bed in there, after all. If she’s going to do this, she’s taking every precaution to make sure she doesn’t mess this up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oddly, he doesn’t even give her a look for doing so. He’s distractedly dragging his arms through the water, and only when Puffy swims directly into his face does he seem to remember that they should probably up for air soon.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy, with her Respiration III helmet, is fine. In fact, anyone would be fine, especially if they’re fresh off respawn. There’s no reason for Dream to be coughing and shivering on the bank like he’s a tick away from drowning, but here he is anyway, considerably more miserably without the naturally hydrophobic nature of enchanted armor.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey,” Puffy says, as he slowly gets back to his feet, “you forget how to swim?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“S’colder than I expected,” Dream says, and then with the expected amount of bite, “hurry up, are you trying to get us caught?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t boss me around, duckling,” Puffy retorts, and winces at the habitual diminutive that slipped out. Dream doesn’t react to it at all, though. She doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s preoccupied with suspiciously eyeing up the red tendrils on the ground. Even while wringing water out of his clothes, he acts like he expects them to come to life and attack them at any moment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy’s never seen that happen, but honestly, she wouldn’t be surprised. The stuff acts like it’s just fungal or plant growth, but it grows way too sporadically to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>just</span>
  </em>
  <span> that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They’re both happy to hightail it out of there, with Puffy making sure that her escortee is within reach every step of the way. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Thankfully, they don’t run into any trouble. Anyone awake at the moment is on high alert in all the wrong places, which leaves the community nether portal a nerve-wracking but safe way to put some distance between them and everyone else.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy collects a couple of the beds just lying around from Ranboo’s special powers, and gives a final reminder that Dream needs to follow her within range at all times, and Dream snappishly jerks his head in a nod, and they step into the portal together. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The purple light washes over them, sweeping away the sight of grass blocks and water. After a beat, it ebbs, revealing the nether unfurling endlessly before them. Dream sucks in an audible breath at the sight of the new-and-improved nether hub, which Puffy hopes means he’s shaking off the last of the chills from his brief dip in the duck pond statue.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy starts towards the path that she knows leads to Foolish’s summer home. She hates to impose, but she hadn’t been lying when she said she needed to check on him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She gets two steps along the blackstone path before Dream stops.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now, she doesn’t quite scream in frustration, but it may have been a closer thing than she’d like to admit. Because the problem is, they’re still in plain sight for anyone who happens to be en route to the main nether portal, which isn’t exactly a rare occurrence. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s obvious that Dream isn’t quite as tough as he tries to appear, and maybe he just needs a moment to catch his breath or something, but they really shouldn’t hover around the area more than necessary.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But he doesn’t catch his breath. He doesn’t move at all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s watching the lava lake below them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dream,” Puffy says, very much not enjoying the idea of having to run all the way back to the duck statue if he decides to take a swim in it just to spite her, “if you respawn, everyone’s going to know that something’s up, and it’s going to be harder the second time around. Don’t do it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t respond. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s like he doesn’t even hear her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That’s another oddity that’s come out of Dream sometime during the point where she lost track of him in her shadow and now. Dream keeps clipping in and out of touch with reality, making his volatility all the worse with seemingly little inclination to acknowledge it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Frankly, Puffy’s equal parts baffled and concerned. She doesn’t know how it starts or how to make it stop, though past experience has taught her that calling his name doesn’t do much.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe something a little more direct would work better. She leans in, taps his shoulder.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He does turn to look at her, this time. There’s a furrow in his brow, but he doesn’t try to shove her off the bridge for touching him or anything, and the reaction proves he’s not completely catatonic, so she counts that as a success. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Let’s keep moving,” she tells him, stepping forward. His gaze shifts to track her movements, but he doesn’t follow. “Come on, Dream.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He leans away, dangerously close to the edge of the path. “Yeah?” he more mouths than whispers. “Just like that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Briefly, Puffy considers other possibilities, but figures that if a tap on the shoulder helps, then… reaching out to grab him by the wrist should be a step up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She moves slowly, but despite his nearly skittish demeanor, Dream doesn’t protest when she encircles his wrist with her fingers. “Just like this,” she says, waveringly reassuring, and tugs until he has no choice but to move his feet and step after her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They walk, and though the path is short, it’s a painful journey.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s following her again, yes, but not of his own will and mind—never mind how twisted those have become, never mind how much worse that would be—and it’s less an echo of a duckling and more a bastardization of the memory, a weeping reminder of how far they’ve strayed and how far they have to go.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All because she hadn’t stepped in when she could, because she didn’t want to sully herself with Dream’s mistaken choices.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She should have been there to yank him away from that path. The what-ifs ring discordantly in echo of every clink of her armor against blackstone, each move sending a stab of needle-thin guilt into her lungs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her other duckling’s portal isn’t that far, but by the time Puffy drags Dream into its purple light, she could be bleeding through her boots and she wouldn’t be surprised.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>In theory, Dream knows who Foolish is.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In reality, one bare-bones conversation that consisted mostly of Dream dumping rules and basic resources on him before leaving for the shattered savannah and never looking back doesn’t really say much about who Foolish is as a person.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sure, he’s a shark-totem with ambition, a bizarre hybrid of something delicately magical and viciously material, but most of what Dream knows about his character comes solely from the person who recommended that Dream add him: Puffy. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d determinedly vouched that he’d be a good fit—something about his relaxed and open temperament, something about his grand visions for big builds, something about kinship and </span>
  <em>
    <span>ducklings</span>
  </em>
  <span> and—Dream had agreed mostly because he wanted her to stop talking about it, reluctant to let those weighty words unfurl the tight knot in his chest into something vulnerable. At the time, he hadn’t the mind to come up with an opaque enough excuse, and just acquiesced.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Foolish is the last person Dream ever added to the whitelist, actually. Anyone else is likely XD’s work, but as far as he knows, there hasn’t been more than one or two additions since, and they haven’t been too vocal.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It makes sense. People stopped approaching Dream of their own will ages ago, and XD is out of reach for entirely different reasons.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream still remembers hesitating, elbow deep in the soft, ethereal light of the whitelist that protects this world he built from the void up. In the end, he still couldn’t come up with a sufficient reason to roll back his agreement, and so had carefully inscribed Foolish’s callsign letter by letter into the code. He remembers drawing back when he finished, pensive, giving the world barely a dozen ticks to process the change before he sent an off-world message to the player of interest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Foolish himself had been surprised but eager, and promptly dropped in. They’d had their little tour, and then Dream had left, and Dream hasn’t seen or communicated with him since. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All of which is to say that Dream, freshly broken out and still stinging from the experience in more ways than he’d ever admit, did expect Foolish to pick a temperate biome befitting a part-maritime predator, part-immortal-construct.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He did not expect him to make a home in a whole desert.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He did not expect him to make a home </span>
  <em>
    <span>spanning</span>
  </em>
  <span> half the desert.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s far bigger than he expected. Dream apparently doesn’t do a very good job of hiding his surprise, because Puffy lets out a proud little laugh. “Foolish is one of those large-scale builders,” she informs, as though the sprawling pyramid, looming statues, and excessively spacious gates weren’t enough to clue him in on that. “He’s probably going to reshape the whole desert by the end of the year.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream rolls his shoulders against the desert wind, idly registering how… chilly the climate feels, compared to the nether’s endless lakes of lava that they left just moments before. He suspects it’ll warm up swiftly come morning, but for now the lack of clinging heat just sets his nerves on edge. “That’s assuming it doesn’t get griefed before then,” he says, and ignores the warning raise of her brow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Lack of space is only one of the reasons why he lives this far out,” she says. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream scoffs. “That won’t help. I lived forever away too, but Tommy came along anyway,” he says, deliberately antagonistic. It feels good, like recovering a piece of himself he’d thought melted away in the heart of Pandora’s Vault, reaffirming that sharpness </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> a virtue, or at least more useful than a ‘gentler touch’.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You </span>
  <em>
    <span>invited</span>
  </em>
  <span> him over to your secret evil villain lair,” Puffy points out. “And then tried to kill him. That’s not the same.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I wasn’t going to kill him.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, because killing his best friend in front of him is so much better.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream rolls his eyes. “It wouldn’t have been permanent.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy stares at him in disbelief. “Okay,” she says, and drops his hand—wait, when had she gotten ahold of it, why hadn’t he noticed until just now—to pinch the bridge of her nose. “Just because it doesn’t stick doesn’t mean it isn’t bad, Dream.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh, not </span>
  <em>
    <span>this,</span>
  </em>
  <span> surely. Not after Dream already yielded two lives to his own weapon in Tommy’s hands, one for each that Dream took from him. Say what anyone will of him, but Dream knows that turnabout is fair play.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He’s died twice before,” Dream says to Puffy, who won’t stop looking at him as though seeing the red eyes of an angry wolf in what had previously been an unassuming puppy, which is fine because he </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> dangerous and </span>
  <em>
    <span>should</span>
  </em>
  <span> be feared, but this isn’t part of it. This is just being practical. Not understanding, he pushes on with, “It’s nothing new, and they know I wouldn’t have let him die forever.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rather, they </span>
  <em>
    <span>should</span>
  </em>
  <span> know.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then again, these very same people thought he’d make the same mistake twice, bringing a ‘real’ disc to play in a jukebox atop a tiny tower in the middle of a fight. Overconfidence is simple enough to learn from, and if they thought him incapable of that, then maybe they really don’t think him capable of bringing someone back from the dead. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe he should have proved it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe that would’ve been the difference. If he’d postured less and acted more, going straight for the throat rather than toying with the mind… Maybe a final death would have been enough to cow Tommy. Maybe it would have been enough to pry a vow from him, in exchange for resurrecting Tubbo.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe that would have spared Dream from the army that poured in after, and the betrayal.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No. No, it doesn’t do to stray from realism. Making Tommy and Tubbo bend to his will wouldn’t have stopped the betrayal. It might have stopped the imprisonment, but Punz would have always… </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Netherite armor. Tridents, axes, swords.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>XD whispering, </span>
  <em>
    <span>enough. I want peace.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You shouldn’t have killed any of them at all,” Puffy tells him sternly, but Dream thinks only of the mercenary’s hand raised against him and bites the inside of his cheek to choke back that old rearing pain of </span>
  <em>
    <span>how could I have been so stupid as to trust you</span>
  </em>
  <span> in the back of his mouth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It takes a moment for his throat to loosen up, to swallow past a hurdle he thought long shelved away. But the moment his voice returns, he snaps, “The only one who’s ever taken a final life is Philza, against his own son. Why don’t you lecture </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span> about it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>(He doesn’t count the incident at Logsteadshire. That was just one of XD’s little games, a puppet with a fragment of a false self, a mockery of Dream that imitated neither in a weak attempt to humanize them both. It wasn’t a player. It wasn’t even a person.)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>(It may have shouted and threatened and screamed and died like one, but—false things are false, in the end.)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy’s gaze chills. “Dream. Tommy and Tubbo are kids. You shouldn’t have taken </span>
  <em>
    <span>any</span>
  </em>
  <span> of their lives, do you understand?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream shifts away from her, rubbing at the too-cool patch on his wrist where she’d been holding onto him. “Should I have let them keep ripping the server apart, then?” he sneers. “Taking land, griefing homes—”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How are they ripping apart the server when </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> blew up New L’Manburg?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“L’Manburg was a mistake that needed fixing from the start,” Dream says. “It always has been. I shouldn’t have let them get that far. Ever since I let them become a thing, it’s always been nations this, independence that. Nobody lives in the same place anymore.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy says, “That’s because you keep starting wars, and nobody wants to get involved anymore.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A dull echo of fury thumps in Dream’s chest, and he breathes through the remembered indignation of seeing walls dark and daring as they cut through the land, of being told he and his friends could not freely trek across the world that he raised from source code and seed by his own hands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Old grievances, really. They’re too old to pursue anymore, with Wilbur dead and Tommy victorious and Tubbo surviving and Fundy fleeing halfway across the world. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Back then, Dream had relented of his own will. He’d already won, proved himself right, and when Tommy came begging with discs in hand, he hadn’t seen the harm in giving the beaten dog a little breathing room.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He hadn’t meant to put them down, really. And he didn’t.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He probably should have. He should’ve taken his victory and held tight, should have torn down those blackstone walls with his maxed-out tools and drawn those strays back into the greater server when the nation was still too young to get so terribly attached to the siren song of isolation.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Tommy had pleaded, desperate enough to offer up his most treasured possessions without any prompting whatsoever, and Dream had been </span>
  <em>
    <span>soft,</span>
  </em>
  <span> damn him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It will never happen again. He’s plenty sharp enough now, honed by obsidian and betrayal.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Just one of those things you needed to be there for, then,” Dream says, quieter than he means to be.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy sighs, and despite himself he registers her disappointment with an internal wince before smoothing it out to nonchalance again. She opens her mouth, clearly about to push a point that only proves that she doesn’t understand his, but an unfamiliar voice cuts in before then, calling out, “Hey, Puffy!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream’s hand is at his hip before he registers exactly who the speaker is. He cranes his neck up, spotting not the silvery glint of netherite-steel but rather the glint of gold, sun-baked and honey-sweet. Up at the edge of the entry gate roof is Foolish himself, leaning over to wave eagerly at them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They’re too far away to make out any mischief in those emerald eyes, but his voice carries it well enough. “I didn’t expect you today, Papa Puffy,” he says brightly, and hearing that particular term of affection without any prior warning is like faceplanting into a Thorns enchantment. Dream takes a step back as Foolish hops down—saving himself from the fall damage with a deftly placed water bucket—and sizes him up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, well,” Puffy says, as Foolish’s emerald gem eyes shift over to Dream. “I… need to figure something out with my—our—this… escapee.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream meets Foolish’s shark smile with teeth of his own. “Hello,” he says, steady.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Foolish says, “Shouldn’t you be in prison?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shouldn’t you be in prison</span>
  </em>
  <span> is a simple enough question, but the words drip into a dark mirror and disturb it like nothing should, a silver dewdrop rippling across something that should have been as sturdy as obsidian but isn’t. The earth below Dream crumbles into thin liquid and there’s nothing he can do as it drags him down, the memory of lava sucking him in as it flays him open consuming his thoughts in vivid detail.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He inhales slowly, tasting sand on the wind. The desert sprawls, nearly endless. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s fine. His sense of balance is just a little out of practice. No wonder it’s failing him now, when the soft sand keeps trying to trip him up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Still, somehow, that doesn’t feel right. The offset unnerves Dream, whatever it is, but when he shuts his eyes for a beat and opens them again he still sees just sand dunes and sandstone. And Foolish, of course, still waiting for an answer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream’s smile tightens without his conscious input, pulled taut against a low snarl building up between his ribs. He can’t tell if it’s a promise or a threat, not yet, but it keeps him anchored here in the desert. For now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I broke myself out,” he says, and it doesn’t even feel like a lie when it leaves his lips. “It was pretty easy.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Foolish says, “So easy that it took you… almost three months to do?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I helped plan the prison, you know,” Dream says. He does not say, </span>
  <em>
    <span>none of my wishes may undo XD’s, and neither may his contradict mine.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He does not say, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I was made to wait, to give peace a fighting chance.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He only looks to his hands, sees blood and broken bits of obsidian digging into his palms until they vanish with a blink. “It was built to cover every escape route I could think of. I’m surprised it </span>
  <em>
    <span>only</span>
  </em>
  <span> took me a few months.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>XD had returned early.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Cool,” says Foolish irreverently, and then turns to Puffy. “So does that mean you’re hide out here with me for a while? Both of you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s the plan, if it’s alright with you,” she says. Her voice lowers, as though Dream will not hear despite literally standing in her shadow, “I know Dream didn’t turn out for the best, and there’s a whole lot of people looking for him now, but this is something I have to do.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream casts her a curious look. This isn’t near as far as he’d expected to be forced to go, not that he could recount exactly how long the trip through the nether took, and it </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> putting Foolish in direct proximity with him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy, catching his glance, adds, “Temporarily.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ah. That makes more sense. She wouldn’t want to leave her </span>
  <em>
    <span>failure</span>
  </em>
  <span> too close to its replacement, after all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream lets his attention drift, wandering loosely over the buildings. It’s quite a bit of leverage, all on display, he considers. He probably won’t have the chance to gather anything remotely threatening, whether it be TNT or withers, but it’s something he can work with.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>These shackles, at least, are much easier to break. He just needs a little time.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy can’t imagine why Dream wouldn’t want to stay here.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s far enough from the center of the server to avoid immediate harassment, but not so far that it’s impossible to see or reach anybody. Surely he doesn’t really mean to go thousands of chunks before settling down? No matter what his plans are, that just seems unwieldy. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then again, he had made his secret lair pretty far out. With his whole thing about not needing anything, or anyone, maybe he’s purposefully putting distance between him and everyone else.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Unfortunately for him, Puffy isn’t going to let that happen. Dream as he is now proves that isolation does none of them any favors, and maybe enabling that artificial divide that Dream came up with isn’t the best solution.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’s given the others plenty of chances. This is her business now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It worries her, honestly. Dream hadn’t snapped out of that stumbling passivity when she’d pulled him through the portal or anything, but rather a slow melt back into awareness as they walked the cobble oath. Even then, his steps never stopped being syrupy and uneven, completely lacking the practiced grace that used to lace his every move.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d know, having sparred with him until he developed that style.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy has no idea how she’s going fix this, but the first step is taking a bit of break here in the refuge of Foolish’s Temple of the Undying. Some of that odd tension in Dream’s shoulders dissipates, once she assures him that he doesn’t have to stay around here forever.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Thankfully, the place is big enough that if Dream wants to avoid Foolish for whatever reason, there’s plenty of space to do so, while Puffy can still have some outside interaction.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her determination does not blind her. She knows what happens to people who try to handle Dream on their own; they get talked in circles and pushed to the brink, where they either fold like Tubbo or break like Tommy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The kids still won’t talk about it, but Puffy doesn’t need to know the gritty details to know that for all that Dream is lost, a shattered shadow constantly on the brink of fluttering away to some event horizon, he’s still dangerous.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Foolish, unabashed and unintimidated, says, “Do you just want to… I don’t know, hang out in one of the spare rooms? I’ve got a couple of those. They’re unfinished, though.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll probably take you up on that,” Puffy says. “Looks like you’ve got plans, and I don’t think there’s much room for something I build on my own.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Eh, the desert’s big enough. Plus, I’ve seen your builds, Puffy. I trust your design sense.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy’s not so sure. She knows how to build, yes, but she’s not so confident that anything she comes up with will fit in with Foolish’s desert aesthetic, since she has much more affinity for the salty-wet than the arid-dry. Still, she tips her captain’s hat at him thankfully. “Maybe,” she says,” though we’ll still need a temporary room while I work on that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She glances over to Dream again out of the corner of her eye, expecting him to protest, but he’s just looking at the sandstone structures with an expressly blank stare, like he checked out of the conversation the moment he got the information he wanted.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, let’s get that sorted,” Foolish says, and beckons for them to follow as he starts heading into the main building. “I might as well give you a tour, there’s been a few improvements, and Dream hasn’t seen this place at all.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream’s gaze flicks over to him at the sound of his name, and then skews back over to the pyramid tall and proud at the center. “I think I get the idea,” he says, but follows anyway when Puffy moves.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Foolish shrugs. “It’s got its little secrets here and there.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He takes them along, pointing out the structures he’s made and the reasoning behind them, and Puffy’s heard most of it already and Dream’s scarcely listening but Foolish doesn’t seem to mind.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On the way to their temporary quarters, Dream stumbles on the stairs. It’s instinct that has Puffy reaching out for him and reflex that has Dream knocking her hand away and recoiling with a low growl, and for the sake of all of their fraying nerves, because that show of weakness was apparently the last straw for Dream’s patience, Foolish decides to do the rest of the tour later.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You can make your home here,” he says, showing them to their temporary room. It looks like a repurposed storage room, devoid of any decorations or windows, but that’s all the better. There’s only one way in, and though sandstone is not the strongest block to line the walls with, it’s built into the ground enough that trying to dig out isn’t feasible without some proper tools, which Dream has no way to get his hands on.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy puts down two beds in the corners opposite the door, tells Dream to pick one, and to stay put. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I need to talk with Foolish for a second,” she says. “Don’t go anywhere.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream doesn’t acknowledge her at all. He just meanders over to one of the beds, running his hands along the sheets with something like reverence or wonder, and Puffy turns away before he can see the hybrid pity and worry in her eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Right outside,” she says to Foolish, lowly, and he nods.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They step out, shutting the wooden door behind them—“I can replace that with iron in a bit,” Foolish says, reading the concern off Puffy’s frown, to her nod of approval—before she leans against the smooth sandstone halls and </span>
  <em>
    <span>sighs,</span>
  </em>
  <span> world-weary.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this,” she tells Foolish, “but I’m sure as hell going to try.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good luck,” Foolish says, and lets out a little laugh that’s more grave than amused. “He’s not going to be very cooperative. I feel like I was about to see a fight break out between you two, honestly.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know. You might—I know it’s hot out here, but you probably want to keep all your armor on as long as Dream’s going to be staying here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Foolish frowns slightly. “I’ve managed to squeak a bit of my own magic in here,” he says, “so I’m not exactly unprotected. And he doesn’t look very threatening, honestly.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Doesn’t mean he can’t fight,” Puffy says. “You’ve seen him perform before, right? He’s outplayed three people on half a heart. I don’t want this decision of mine to put you in danger.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t worry, Papa Puffy,” he says brightly. “I can take care of myself, but I’ll grab my armor and keep it in hand too. What’s your goal, anyway? Are you trying to help him out, help him hide?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” Puffy says. She hesitates, and then, “It’s a little callous, but—he’s my responsibility, right? He was my apprentice, my duckling. And somewhere along the way, he started hurting other kids, and that’s not okay. This… isn’t out of some goodness of my heart or anything. I just want him to stop hurting people. I don’t want to have raised someone capable of doing all this.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The words taste selfish as they leave her mouth but she doesn’t flinch away from them. They’re true, after all. She found Dream young—younger than she found Foolish, who’s had centuries of slow growth—and she helped frame the person he could become.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She doesn’t know how he became </span>
  <em>
    <span>this.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know where I went wrong,” Puffy says, with the heavy gravity of a captain and a warrior and a mentor to someone everyone else sees as a monster. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He went off on his own a while ago, didn’t he?” Foolish asks. “It might not be a thing you did wrong, exactly.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Puffy sends him a flat look. “Don’t tell me you think he would’ve turned out like this no matter what.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, not at all! I’m just saying, something else might’ve happened since, and that’s why he’s this… bad.” Foolish gestures at the closed door behind them. “I know you’re good, because you’ve been good to me, and I think I still see that good in him, sometimes. He came to give me so many things, on my first day here, even though he was wanted. Although that was also right after he set Tommy’s house on fire, I think,” he adds under his breath, and then quickly barrels on, “but he’s not just evil for evil’s sake, I bet. Something must’ve happened.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know,” Puffy says. “I just hope it’s not too late already to try and make this better, without resorting to… killing him, and being done with it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Foolish says, “Are you sure you can?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Kill him? If I have to, I will.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, I mean—this is a weird world,” Foolish says. “The Egg exists, for one. For another, I can actually—Puffy, I can use </span>
  <em>
    <span>my</span>
  </em>
  <span> magic, on someone else’s world, when they haven’t given me any permission to. That doesn’t make any sense. It was just a curiosity before, and I never pushed it, but the more I think about it… XD exists, too. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Can </span>
  </em>
  <span>Dream actually die?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dream, clutching at his chest, cornered and feral-eyed and letting everyone else bully him into obsidian and lava because Tommy tore two deaths from him in quick succession and his third rested in their unforgiving hands, his fractured heart and twisted perspective, going from everything to nothing in the span of a breath.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He thinks he can,” Puffy says. “On its own, that’s enough.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Foolish winces. “I really don’t want you to have to do that, Papa Puffy.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ve done worse,” Puffy says, briskly. Namely letting him get this bad to begin with, so that it’s not one just person, but several—like the branching of some grotesque root system, always splitting off to hurt more and more. “I’ll be fine, Foolish. I just have to be careful to do this right. I just need a little time.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>me: oh the canon plot’s been a bit slow lately, maybe i can squeeze in my headcanons before they get yeeted<br/>canon: nope<br/>me:<br/>me: WELP</p>
<p>anyway i meant to speedrun this chapter but then my brain was like “remember in middle school when you sank literal months into a card game app? you should see if it’s available on steam” and i am but a helpless dandelion seed compared to the hurricane gale of my inability to focus. so i did that. and forgot to write. for several days. </p>
<p>hope you enjoyed lmao</p>
<p>(dream’s version of the early canon events are faintly skewed, dont take his words as gospel)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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